740.0011 E. W./1–2946: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)
u.s. urgent
996. For Ambassador Winant from the Secretary. I wish you to inform Bevin28 that because the press in the US has had some information as to the agreement reached at Yalta on the Kuril Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin I think that the agreement of February 11 with regard to Soviet participation in the war against Japan should be made public. I hope that Mr. Bevin will agree to simultaneous [Page 686] publication on February 4 in London, Moscow and Washington. I am similarly taking the question up with Molotov.29
- Ernest Bevin, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩
- This telegram was sent separately to Moscow, mutatis mutandis, as No. 165. Replies were received from both the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in favor of publishing this agreement, and the date settled upon was the anniversary of its signature on February 11, 1945. Mr. Kennan further reported in telegram 410, February 12, 1946, from Moscow, that the Moscow newspapers on that day printed the Russian text, and beneath that a facsimile of the original English text showing the signatures of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill (740.00119PW/2–1246). For text of this agreement regarding entry of the Soviet Union into the War against Japan, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, p. 984. For text and background remarks released to the press on February 11, 1946, see Department of State Bulletin, February 24, 1946, p. 282.↩